For those interested in alternative fuels that are renewable, Direct Methanol Fuel Cells (DMFCs) are worth investigation. These alternative energy devices – invented at the Caltech/NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory with the University of Southern California (USC) – can be used to power a wide range of portable and mobile electronics.

Here is the green beauty of these electrochemical devices: They are capable of converting high energy density fuel (liquid methanol) directly to electricity, reports Direct Methanol Fuel Cell Corporation, a subsidiary of Viaspace, which develops disposable methanol fuel cartridges that provide the energy source for fuel cell powered notebook computers, mobile phones, military equipment and other applications being developed by electronics OEMs, such as Samsung and Toshiba.

They operate silently, at relatively low temperatures and offer much longer operating time than today’s batteries. Better than a battery, DMFCs don’t need to be recharged. They can provide electricity continuously to the consumer electronic devices as long as oxygen and fuel are supplied to the fuel cell. To achieve this, DMFCs can be “hot-swapped” and instantly recharged with replacement methanol cartridges (akin to batteries).

Methanol or a methanol/water solution is the industry’s choice of fuel. Because it is a liquid, it is easy to store and transport. Methanol is inexpensive and readily available.

Viaspace provides this detail on how the fuels cell works:

How does a DMFC Work?

The heart of a fuel cell consists of catalysts for the electrochemical reaction and a special piece of plastic that can conduct protons. The technical term for this special plastic is polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) and the most common PEM used in DMFCs today is NafionTM, produced by Dupont. The most common catalysts used are PtRu alloy for the anode and Pt for the cathode.

In the fuel cell, the fuel is not burned, but rather is converted into electricity through an electrochemical process that splits methanol into protons, electrons, and carbon dioxide at the anode and then combines these protons and electrons with oxygen at the cathode to produce water. It is a very simple concept.

As I have reported before, methanol is an alternative renewable fuel that should be embraced with open arms – from both a cost and climate standpoint.

The concentrated solar power (aka concentrating solar power) market will continue to grow, even in the midst of solar PV’s rapid cost reductions. According to the latest reports, China is projected to have 1,000 MW (or 1 GW) of concentrated solar thermal power (CSP) capacity by 2015 and 3 GW by 2020.

“Among the newly-encouraged energy resources listed in the Catalogue of Industry Structure Adjustment 2011 Version issued by China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) on June 1st, 2011, concentrating solar thermal power was given high priority,” REVE notes.

“According to China’s 12th Five-Year Plan, in the next 5 years, regions with good illumination conditions and adequate space and water resources will serve as pilot areas of solar thermal power projects to accelerate industry development. Insiders believe that by the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015), China’s installed capacity of solar thermal power will exceed that of photovoltaic generation.”

REVE also notes that 2nd Annual China Concentrating Solar Power Summit will be June 28-29 in Beijing, China, where ‘hot issues’ will be discussed and investment opportunities explored. “250+ industry leaders from government departments, power & energy companies, solar power plants, technology and equipment suppliers, industry solution providers and research institutes will join in.”

Currently, here’s a list of Chinese CSP projects either planned or under construction:

The planned 450-MW solar power plant, Mexico’s first large-scale solar PV project and the largest by far in the country to date, is to be constructed near Tecate, Mexico in 50-MW stages. The first stage is to start late this year and start producing clean, renewable solar power before year-end 2013, according to a SolFocus press release.

The Baja solar power plant will employ SolFocus’s Concentrator Photovoltaic equipment and will be owned and operated by SolMex Energy SA de CV, a new joint venture company formed by Grupo Musa and Synergy.

Baja: A Tremendous Solar Power Resource, Now a Test Ground for Solar CPV

Northern Mexico has the third-greatest solar resource in the world, according to the developers. The energy conversion efficiency of SolFocus’s CPV solar cells approach 40%, as compared to less than 20% for the highest efficiency crystalline silicon (c-SI) solar PV out on the market today. Durable and able to perform at high efficiency in high-temperature environments, they’re also well suited to site conditions in Baja, according to the company.

Some 3,850 SolFocus SF-1136SX CPV systems will be installed on the 122 hectare (~300 acre) Baja CPV solar power project site. Though Grupo Musa expects to use most of the initial 50-MW of renewable energy produced by the Baja CPV solar power plant to power its own facilities, the project will deliver low-cost, renewable energy reliably over the long term across the region. That will foster and facilitate economic activity in an environmentally and socially responsible way, including through the creation of green jobs, SolFocus CEO Mark Crowley pointed out.

“Building on the track record of SolFocus projects in the southwest U.S. and Mexico, this project in Mexico will turn dormant land into jobs and low-cost, reliable electricity. In the first year of operation we should deliver at least 120,000 megawatt hours of electricity to Baja California.”

The 450-MW Baja solar power project is also notable in that it offers additional evidence of private sector follow-through on the Mexican government’s efforts to chart and navigate a transition away from an energy policy centered on oil and gas to cleaner, renewable energy resources.

“The project is in direct alignment with the Mexico and U.S. bilateral clean energy agenda. The countries share a common goal of achieving strong economic growth and energy security while addressing climate change and increasing the reliability of energy infrastructure,” said Lic. David Muñoz, director general of the Baja California State Commission of Energy.

“Mexico has been successful with wind energy, and now this large solar project will support our energy infrastructure and economic development efforts in the very near future. This project adds to Governor Osuna Millan’s vision of a sustainable Baja California.”

Developing Pacific Mexico’s wind energy resources have thus far been the focus of renewable energy project announcements. Marena Renovables earlier this month placed an order for 396-MW worth of Vestas wind turbines, which are to be installed on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca. The largest wind farm in Latin America announced to date, Marena Renovable’s a multinational consortium comprised of Dutch pension fund service provider PGGM, Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp., and Macquarie Bank’s Mexican infrastructure fund.

Developing wind and solar power generation dovetails with Mexico’s climate change action plans. Also earlier this month, Mexico’s Senate began working on a unified national climate change bill, one that would consolidate and better organize climate change action plans that have already been passed in the Federal District of Mexico City, Tabasco and Veracruz.

Wind turbines may get a bit of an efficiency boost (eventually) by mimicking human memory systems, thanks to the thinking and work of some Chinese researchers.

As you well know, the wind changes frequently, and wind turbines have to adjust as it changes in order to maximize their efficiency. They can only do that as well as their control systems allow them to. Some Chinese researchers think they have found a ‘simple’ way to improve those control systems by making them act more like humans and memorize previous changes.

Here’s more information from the American Institute of Physics, via Science Daily:

Most turbines are designed to produce maximum allowable power once winds reach a certain speed, called the rated speed. In winds above or below the rated speed, control systems can make changes to the turbine system, such as modifying the angle of the blades or the electromagnetic torque of the generator.

These changes help keep the power efficiency high in low winds and protect the turbine from damage in high winds. Many control systems rely on complex and computationally expensive models of the turbine’s behavior, but the Chinese group decided to experiment with a different approach.

The researchers developed a biologically inspired control system, described in the American Institute of Physics’ Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, that used memory of past control experiences and their outcomes to generate new actions. In simulations, the controller showed initially poor results, but quickly learned how to improve, matching the performance of a more traditional control system overall. The memory-based system is attractive because of its simplicity, the researchers write, concluding that “the human-memory-based method holds great promise for enhancing the efficiency of wind power conversion.”

So, apparently, this new method hasn’t resulted in better wind turbine efficiencies yet, but it’s expected to in the future. Yet another technological advancement likely to bring down wind power’s already low costs.

We’ve been covering the famous, world-record-holding solar-powered airplane known as the Solar Impulse for years — from its birth, to its first flight (video at bottom of post), to its first 24-hour flight, to its first international flight, to its plans for an around-the-world journey in 2014. Now, in prep for that around-the-world journey, the Swiss Solar Impulse will soon make a 48-hour flight from Switzerland to Morocco (yes, it’s not the fastest thing in the skies).

Here are some more details, posted on sister site Planetsave last night:

“After its inaugural flight to Paris and Brussels in 2011, Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg’s solar airplane will attempt, for the first time ever, to fly over 2,500 km (1,550 miles) without using a drop of fuel, finally landing in Morocco,” Solar Impulse just announced this week.

Piccard will fly part of the way and Borschberg the rest of the way, probably making the switch near Madrid, all the while not using any fuel beyond what the sun provides.

And here are my overall thoughts on the plane and its place in the world of aviation and cleantech:

While flights in this plane may not be very practical for most people right now, think about how fast we’ve transitioned from the Wright brother’s early, dinky planes to the jets we fly in today. Also, this plane is really just a testament to the tremendous leaps and bounds we’ve made in the solar power sector in general in the past few decades (or even just the past few years). Kudos to the great folks in the solar sector moving us forward and the great folks involved in the solar impulse project — hopefully it encourages and inspires more people to go solar!

After a spurt of nuclear news in the past week, we’ve got yet another story on the industry’s exit from the world energy stage — E.ON and RWE (German energy companies) announced yesterday that they are pulling out of a joint venture that would build a new nuclear power plant in the UK. Here are more details from AFP:

Enphase Energy, now a world leader in microinverter technology for the solar industry, announced pricing yesterday for its initial public offering (IPO) of 8,969,697 shares of common stock. The price was set at $6.00 per share.

“All of the shares of common stock in the offering are being offered directly by Enphase. In addition, Enphase has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 1,345,454 shares of common stock, solely to cover over-allotments, if any,” the company noted in a news release.

“Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, BofA Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering. Jefferies & Company, Inc. is acting as joint lead manager, and Lazard Capital Markets LLC and ThinkEquity LLC are acting as co-managers. The shares are expected to begin trading on the NASDAQ Global Market on March 30, 2012 under the ticker symbol ‘ENPH.’”

Still not clear on what Enphase’s microinverter technology does? As Enphase writes, it ”increases energy production, simplifies design and installation, improves system uptime and reliability, reduces fire safety risk and provides a platform for intelligent energy management. Our semiconductor-based microinverter system converts energy at the individual solar module level and brings a systems-based, high technology approach to solar energy generation.”

Fernanda B. Viégas and Martin Wattenberg, founders of Many Eyes, have created one of the coolest maps I’ve ever seen — it looks like a living Vincent van Gogh masterpiece. (Makes me think van Gogh was able to see the wind.)

You can see a still of the map above, but you have to check out the (nearly) live wind map to get the full effect.

Martin and Fernanda work for Google, and the wind visualization map works best in Google Chrome (which you should be using anyway!). However, the creators note that the map is just a personal art project and not associated with any companies. More from Viégas and Wattenberg:

Surface wind data comes from the National Digital Forecast Database. These are near-term forecasts, updated once per hour. So what you’re seeing is close to live data. (See the NDFD site for precise details; our timestamp shows time of download.) And for those of you chasing top wind speed, note that maximum speed may occur over lakes or just offshore.

An invisible, ancient source of energy surrounds us—energy that powered the first explorations of the world, and that may be a key to the future.

This map shows you the delicate tracery of wind flowing over the US….

We’d be interested in displaying data for other areas; if you know of a source of detailed live wind data for other regions, or the entire globe, please let us know.

As reported previously here on CleanTechnica, the Ford Focus Electric is the most fuel-efficient car in the US, and it is now on sale for $39,995. It’s supposed to be available in select states (New York, New Jersey, and California) in April; nationwide sometime this Summer or Fall; and in Europe in late 2012. But now, the news is, to “de-risk” roll-out of the vehicle it is going to use a “built-to-order” model (essentially, what Dell pioneered with computers).

“Under the model, Ford dealers across the US will boast one demonstration vehicle and customers will then be able to order the car and receive their model within around four to six weeks,” James Murray notes over on the Guardian.

“We’ve taken a different approach to other EV manufacturers in that we are producing the Focus EV on the same production line as the gas, hybrid and plug-in hybrid versions,” he explained. “There are simply too many variables impacting the market that we have no control over, so this gives us real flexibility. If the price of crude rises and demand for EVs climbs we can produce more EVs and fewer gas vehicles.”

Sounds like a good idea. (Also, if conservative media and politicians rail on the car for months over one minor non-newsworthy story, effectively killing sales, this would allow Ford to decrease production.)

Murray also noted a number of innovative offerings connected with the Ford Focus Electric. Ford has teamed up with US solar power company SunPower to promote solar-EV combos. A SunPower arrary could provide enough electricity for a Ford Focus driver to go 15,000 miles a year. “Drive Green for Life” is the name of this solar system offering, which will cost less than $10,000 and include a 25-year warranty. (Note that Nissan has teamed up with SunPower to offer essentially the same thing in combination with its Nissan Leaf.)

.In addition, Ford has worked with Microsoft to develop a mobile app that allows users to access data on the car’s battery, local recharging networks, and the driver’s performance.

Tinskey said the two companies had also developed a system known as “Value Charging” whereby Microsoft had developed a database containing information on energy tariffs across the US. “You will be able to tap in your zip code and it will work out the cheapest time to charge the car so you get the best overnight tariffs,” he explained, adding that a driver in San Francisco charging the car overnight could drive 100 miles for around $1.

Ford Focus Electric drivers will also be allowed to drive in California’s HOV lanes.

For more details on the car, check out: Ford Focus Electric: 110 MPGe & Most Fuel-Efficient Car in US

We’ve been covering New Energy Technologies and its SolarWindow technology for years (see the stories at the bottom of this post). However, a new solar startup out of the UK is apparently looking to offer a similar product and could even beat New Energy Technologies to market. Oxford Photovoltaics (aka Oxford PV) was spun out of Oxford University towards the end of 2010. It’s looking to get the price of its technology down to 35 cents per watt (that’s low) and intends to have it on the market by the second half of 2013.

Windows that Generate Power?
So, you might be wondering: ‘Is this legit? Can we really create power from the sunlight that hits windows?’ The answer is: ‘Of course we can! It’s already being done.’ The issue now is just getting the cost down (famous last words of many companies and future-tech enthusiasts).

Oxford PV combines dye-based thin-film solar cells with glass substrates for its technology. This combo results in tinted glass that is at the same time a solar power generation system.

“We screen print metal oxides, dyes, plastics and polymers directly on to glass,” explained Kevin Arthur, chief executive of Oxford PV. “Light reacts with the dye to create a current that we collect through two terminals, just like a standard battery.”

The tinted glass can come in a variety of colors or opaque, and apparently architects are dying for it (no pun intended) and trying to get the company to speed up its development process.

Next Steps for Oxford PV
“The technology has been successfully developed in the lab and Arthur is in San Francisco this week as part of the UK’s Clean and Cool Mission with a view to raising £3.5m in venture capital funding to support the development of a pilot production line,” Business Green reports.

“We have small prototype cells that are 10cm by 10cm, but we want to move to a full scale pilot production line that can make panels that are two metres by three metres,” Arthur said. He also noted that the (simplified) roadmap to commercial production is to finish its current funding round by the end of 2012 and start commercially producing solar glass panels by the third quarter of 2013.

Solar Window Advantages
“There are a lot of cost advantages to thin film solar technologies,” Arthur noted. “Because you are basically screen printing, production costs are much lower than for conventional solar cells and the cost of the materials is also falling. But most importantly once a company has decided to have a glass façade on their building they have already decided to install our substrate.” (And the good news is, that’s the majority of the surface of most modern buildings.)

While the technology certainly isn’t there yet, “modelling done by the company suggested the system could produce solar power at a cost of just 35 cents per watt,” according to Business Green.

Solar Window Potential
Currently, Oxford PV’s solar window technology is just producing electricity at a little over 6% efficiency, but models have shown that there is potential to get that up to about 20%. And, again, the main advantages are the overall lower costs and the widespread use of glass as a building material.

“Figures from architects show that 60 per cent of many modern commercial buildings’ surface area is glass,” Arthur noted. “We have modelled the effect of the solar glass on a 700 foot skyscraper in Texas and it revealed that we could generate up to 5.3MWh a day.

“That’s enough to power 52,000 iPads. If you combined the solar glass with the installation of LED lighting in the building you could power all your lights, as well as DC powered devices such as laptops.”

Looks promising.

Solar Windows from New Energy Technologies
As noted at the top of this article, US startup New Energy Technologies has been working on solar window technology (SolarWindows) for the past few years as well. If you missed stories on this company and technology, check out:

Adam Jones, Special Assistant for Energy Policy at American Progress, wrote a great post on Climate Progress this week on 6 things you really need to know about the value of renewable energy. They are all things that we have covered many, many times here on CleanTechnica, but they are still worth seeing again, especially in a focused, list format. So, here they are:

1.Clean energy is competitive with other types of energy

2. Clean energy creates three times more jobs than fossil fuels

3. Clean energy improves grid reliability

4. Clean energy investment has surpassed investments in fossil fuels

5. Investments in clean energy are cost effective

6. Fossil fuels have gotten 75 times more subsidies than clean energy

Jones also went on to give more details on each of these points, listing a ton of renewable energy facts, which I think he did a great job of, so here are those details (the remainder of this post is from Jones’ Climate Progress piece, except where I add in notes using my initials — ‘ZS’):

1. Clean energy is competitive with other types of energy

§ Renewable energy is cheap today.

§ In California solar developers have signed contracts for power below the projected price of natural gas from a 500-MW combined-cycle power plant.

§ Some wind developers are signing long-term power-purchase agreements in the 3 cents a kilowatt-hour range, far cheaper than any other new power source.

§ New analysis from Bloomberg New Energy Finance projects wind will be “fully competitive with energy produced from combined-cycle gas turbines by 2016? under fair wind conditions.

§ Renewable energy competes well with natural gas. Even with unsustainably low prices for natural gas, large-scale renewable energy is still nipping at its heels and in some cases keeping pace.

§ [ZS: if we took health costs, grid costs, and other externalities into account, solar power would already be at grid parity in the U.S.; and it would be even more competitive if a more appropriate solar panel lifespan were used in cost analyses — some goes for wind power and wind turbines.]

§ [ZS: also, looking beyond the U.S., solar power has hit grid parity without even taking the above externalities and solar panel lifespan into account in some countries, such as Germany, Italy, and Brazil; and wind has done so in many countries as well.]

2. Clean energy creates three times more jobs than fossil fuels

§ A national study showed that job creation in clean energy outdoes fossil fuels by a margin of 3-to-1 — every dollar put into clean energy creates three times as many jobs as putting that same dollar into oil and gas.

§ Wind energy has already created 75,000 jobs, which could grow to as many as 500,000 if we transitioned to getting 20 percent of our energy from wind.

§ Job quality is better. Twice as many medium- and high-credentialed jobs are being created in the clean economy as in fossil fuels.

§ Median wages are 13 percent higher in green energy careers than the economy average. Median salaries for green jobs are $46,343, or about $7,727 more than the median wages across the broader economy. As an added benefit, nearly half of these jobs employ workers with a less than a four-year college degree, which accounts for a full 70 percent of our workforce.

§ The clean energy sector is growing at a rate of 8.3 percent, nearly double the growth rate of the overall economy. Solar thermal energy expanded by 18.4 percent annually from 2003 to 2010, along with solar photovoltaic power by 10.7 percent, and biofuels by 8.9 percent over the same period. Meanwhile, the U.S. wind energy industry saw 35 percent average annual growth over the [previous] five years, according to the 2010 U.S. Wind Industry Annual Market Report.

§ In Europe 1.1 million people are employed in renewable energy. Reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Brookings Institute show that this kind of employment has already started to take hold here and shows enormous promise and potential for the future.

3. Clean energy improves grid reliability

§ In Texas a 2011 power emergency was averted due to the state’s commitment to wind farms, which picked up the slack from failing power plants and prevented catastrophe. Tripp Doggett, the chief executive of the nonprofit Electricity Reliability Council of Texas, responsible for controlling the flow of electricity to 23 million consumers in Texas, thanked the wind industry by name for their contribution.

§ We could reach a point where 20 percent of our energy comes from wind with no negative impact on electric grid reliability. Wind power is easier to manage when we have more of it. Case in point: Energy can be predictably delivered across the 350 MW of German wind farms, showing that renewables can be managed well without serious effects to consumers. Spreading wind farms across wider geographic areas, which we are able to do in the United States, would increase predictability even more.

§ Other countries are proving that large-scale integration of renewables is possible, with 21 percent of Denmark’s electricity now coming from wind. There are times when wind power fulfills more than 100 percent of demand in western Denmark.

§ Any additional costs of integration will be small. The “balancing cost,” or how much it costs to provide backup power for a resource, of wind is less than 10 percent of total wind generation costs, and the effect on consumer power price is close to zero.

4. Clean energy investment has surpassed investments in fossil fuels

§ Last year was the first time global investments in renewable energy surpassed investments in fossil fuels.

§ The global market for clean energy was worth a whopping $250 billion.

§ The United States is currently leading in corporate R&D and venture capital investments in clean energy globally, and last year retook the top spot in overall investment with a 33 percent increase to $55.9 billion.

5. Investments in clean energy are cost effective

§ U.S. government investments in clean energy have been vital to meeting their goals of keeping America on the cutting edge of innovation and competitiveness globally without added risk. The Loan Guarantee Program brought important clean energy projects across the valley of death — the apt description of the financing gap between creating a product and commercializing it — and has helped create a vibrant and valuable market.

§ The production tax credit has successfully lowered the cost of wind power by 90 percent since the 1980s.

§ An independent report conducted by Herb Allison, ex-national finance chairman for John McCain, found the Department of Energy loan guarantee program will cost $2 billion less than initially expected.

§ The five states with most solar and wind installed capacity have actually had the lowest rise in electricity prices from 2005 to 2010. Rate increases in these states were 1.35 cents over five years, against the national average of 1.8 cents.

§ [ZS: additionally, on a societal level, numerous studies by investors and world-leading economists have shown that the cost of climate action is much, much lower than the cost of climate inaction.]

6. Fossil fuels have gotten 75 times more subsidies than clean energy

§ To date, the oil-and-gas industry received $446.96 billion (adjusted for inflation) in cumulative energy subsidies from 1994 to 2009, whereas renewable energy sources received just $5.93 billion (adjusted for inflation).

§ Renewable energy investments should be put in proper historical perspective. According to the Energy Information Agency, “focusing on a single year’s data does not capture the imbedded effects of subsidies that may have occurred over many years across all energy fuels and technologies.”

§ The U.S. government is showing a smaller commitment to renewables than it showed in the early years of the oil-and-gas industries. A study showed that “during the early years of what would become the U.S. oil and gas industries, federal subsidies for producers averaged half a percent of the federal budget. By contrast, the current support for renewables is barely a fifth that size, just one-tenth of 1 percent of federal spending.”

Conclusion

Renewable energy will be the engine of U.S. economic growth and prosperity for years to come, but it is not without opposition. Leaders in policy and business must get behind the Americans who are and will be empowered by renewable power and work together to overcome market barriers and false information. The facts are in and we should seize this opportunity to put Americans back to work and maintain a place at the cutting edge of innovation and competitiveness.

Congressional Republicans squashed the Obama administration and supporting Democratic Senators’ latest attempt to eliminate oil and gas industry subsidies this week, but the Obama administration’s efforts to redirect energy policy away from supporting fossil fuels and towards clean, renewable energy continue nonetheless. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on March 27 for the first time proposed the nation’s first carbon pollution standard, the Clean Air Act standard for carbon pollution from new power plants.

There’s no limit on the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from US coal and other fossil fuel power plants at present. That will change with enactment of the EPA’s Clean Air Act pollution standard, which, while raising the cost of building new coal-fired power plants, will reduce the numerous and sizable health, safety and environmental costs that aren’t being factored into their cost.

“Today we’re taking a common-sense step to reduce pollution in our air, protect the planet for our children, and move us into a new era of American energy,” EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson stated in a press release.

“Right now there are no limits to the amount of carbon pollution that future power plants will be able to put into our skies – and the health and economic threats of a changing climate continue to grow. We’re putting in place a standard that relies on the use of clean, American made technology to tackle a challenge that we can’t leave to our kids and grandkids.”

New Power Plants, New CO2 Emissions Rules

The EPA’s GHG (Greenhouse Gas) Tailoring Rule, issued in May 2010, states that in its new power plant permitting process, the EPA will “focus on the largest industrial sources, those emitting nearly 70 percent of the greenhouse gas pollution from stationary sources, while shielding millions of small businesses that make up the vast majority of the US economy.”

The EPA, since an April 2007 Supreme Court ruling that CO2 meets the definition of an air pollutant, has been working steadily with other federal, state and local government offices to establish the new regulatory rules, along with establishing the organizational framework and processes necessary to implement them.

The EPA’s taking a “phased-in” approach to enacting the new CO2 emission standards for new power plants. In May 2010, the EPA issued its final GHG Tailoring Rule, which “raised the thresholds for GHG emissions that define when permits under the PSD (Prevention of Significant Deterioration) Permit Program and Title V Operating Permit programs are required for new and existing industrial facilities.”

§ Starting in January 2011, large industrial facilities that must already obtain Clean Air Act permits for non-GHGs must also include GHG requirements in these permits if they increase are newly constructed and have the potential to emit 75,000 tons per year of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) or more or modify and increase GHG emissions by that amount.

§ Starting in July 2011, in addition to facilities described above, all new facilities emitting GHGs in excess of 100,000 tons of per year CO2e and facilities making changes that would increase GHG emissions by at least 75,000 tpy CO2e, and that also exceed 100/250 tons per year of GHGs on a mass basis, will be required to obtain construction permits that address GHG emissions (regardless of whether they emit enough non-GHG pollutants to require a permit for those emissions.)

§ Operating permits will be needed by all sources that emit at least 100,000 tons of GHG per year on a CO2e basis beginning in July 2011.

§ Sources less than 50,000 tons of GHGs per year on a CO2e basis will not be required to obtain permits for GHGs before 2016.

With everybody now in a spring’s swing, the time seems perfect for college students to make new green plans for going from place to place. As such, On Bike Share is joining the gig, announcing an affordable campus bike share system that’s designed to “make bicycling an integral part of college and corporate campus transportation.”

On Bike Share (OBS) is in the midst of deploying a comprehensive biking solution for campuses by automating bike fleets. As OBS puts it, campuses design and configure a system to meet their sustainability needs. The OBS system then makes implementation, maintenance, and tracking fast and easy through a series of innovations designed specifically for campus environments.

“Campuses are always looking for ways to be more green,” said David Boyce, OBS co-founder in a news release. “The On Bike Share system delivers an alternative transportation solution in a safe and cost-effective way, while at the same time tracking how often the bikes are being used, and ensuring that the system remains in good working order.”

The OBS system uses key locking technology, back-end software, and innovative chainless technology, operations maintenance costs are lowered. Registered users can remove the OBS chainless bike from the locking system using their ID card. The bike’s unique integrated lock offers riders the convenience of taking the bike where they need to go and the ability to lock it to any standard bike rack.

The chainless technology is a plus, too. OBS bikes use technology from Dynamic Bicycles, and key locking innovation from Morse Watchmans. Boyce adds, “With over 90 percent of all bike maintenance costs attributed to chain and derailleur systems, our customers will benefit from the advantages that chainless bikes provide.”